Evidence of Quad-Core Chips Shows Up in iOS 5.1 Betas

Friday January 6, 2012 7:46 am PST by Eric Slivka

9to5Mac reports that evidence of support for quad-core processors has shown up in beta versions of iOS 5.1, lending support to claims that Apple's forthcoming A6 chips will see a doubling in the number of processing cores.

The references to quad-core iPhone and iPad chips come by way of a hidden panel that describes cores that are supported by iOS device hardware. The updated core management software includes an option of “/cores/core.3,” and this represents a fourth available processing core…

The report notes that single-core processors such as the A4 found in the iPhone 4 and original iPad fall under a "cores/core.0" designation, while dual-core processors such as the A5 in the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 are covered by a "/cores/core.1" designation. The "/cores/core.3" reference thus suggests compatibility with a quad-core chip.

Apple's A6 system-on-a-chip has been rumored several times to carry a quad-core processor, and has been presumed to be set for inclusion in the company's next-generation iPad and iPhone models. There have, however, been some questions about whether the production timeline for the A6 would support its inclusion in the iPad 3, which is rumored for a release around March of this year.

Top Rated Comments

Apple does not publicize many specs for its iOS devices. And they are right: Joe Consumer really doesn't care how MFLOPs the CPU can handle or how many polygons the graphics unit can paint in a second.

Remember that Apple is a software-driven company whose software and services run best on their proprietary, high-margin hardware.

The key with handheld devices is optimizing the software to run efficiently on the hardware. This is where Apple's tight control is advantageous. Android handset manufacturers do not have that control and often their devices which exceed Apple's on a spec sheet, don't perform as well in real world usage. In fact, they may need to beef up the hardware to get similar results.

The biggest concerns in throwing in more hardware performance is battery life and bulk. There are some very important design considerations that need to be made, particularly in the design of handheld devices.

Joe Consumer cares about how quickly the camera starts up and whether or not his favorite game stutters. Stuff like that. Joe Consumer does not care that smartphone X has a Tegra running at 1.2GHz whereas the iPhone 4S is probably underclocked to 800 or 900MHz.

And I'm sure that you learned all of this through first hand experience by using Android and iOS phones on a daily basis over an extended period of time.

No, of course you don't. Your judgment would be completely different if you actually had.

If your iPhone/iPod Touch could run live wallpapers, I'm pretty sure you'd have one just to show off how awesome your gadget is. Since your castrated operating system doesn't support widgets and live wallpapers, of course, by definition, they have to be "stupid".

I also don't know where Android supposedly is a resource hog. My Galaxy S2 runs circles around the iPhone 4S and it never "fries" the battery. And it still has more features than the iPhone 4S - and most of the OS features that Apple now introduced as "innovations" in iOS 5 have been in Android since, well, ever. Including voice assistants.

Maybe the 3Gs still runs the latest iOS, but it's actually a suboptimal experience. Not as bad when iOS 4 was released for the 3G, but it's also not a real joy to use iOS 5 on that old 3Gs hardware anymore. And talking about software support in general -- my iPhone 3G was only over six months old when Apple decided to drop the software support for it. Sure, the 3G had already been on the market for quite a while when I purchased mine, but nevertheless I felt betrayed by Apple. I also felt betrayed by them when I had to pay for every single iOS update for my first generation iPod Touch. They only changed that AFTER I had already sold my iPod Touch.

But the most important thing speaking FOR Android and AGAINST iOS is the fact that you CAN customize the Android OS. It provides freedom. The one thing that you will NEVER get from Apple, and that alone is the ultimate killer argument for me to never buy an iOS-based product anymore.

A good friend of mine has a Galaxy S2. My 4S

- Gets better battery life time (even with the 4S' crappy battery life time)
- Makes better pictures and movies
- Syncs with my iMac-MBA-iPad calender/mail/address book faster through iCloud than his S2 does with his Google stuff
- Has a far far better browsing experience. Pages just load faster and scrolls like butter. He can have his flash.
- can download software that I know is verified by Apple, rather than the unverified spam junk that is on Android store.

But you go ahead and customize your phone OS until you weigh about an ounce. Meantime, I'll enjoy verified great software while watching beautiful photos and movies on my Macs that are neatlessly and flawlessly synced across my iCloud devices, as are my notes-calenders-email accounts-documents and so on.

Sure they do. Go to www.apple.com, and you'll seem them touting the dual core A5 in the 4S right on the front page. Click on iPhone, then specs, and you'll see all kinds of info Joe Consumer doesn't care about...publicized.

I didn't say they don't publicize any specs. I wrote that they didn't publicize many specs.

Note carefully that Apple does not tell the CPU frequency, nor how much RAM the iPhone contains. They don't mention what version ARM architecture the A5 chip has, nor the graphics subsystem name.

That's weak. You do know that there were several mobile OS for smart phones before iPhone came out, right? iPhone was indeed one of the first phones with a new form factor (LG PRADA was the first one) which was made possible by the progress in the development of capacitive screens but this generally has very little to do with Apple. They just happened to enter this space when the technology was changing. They did not invent capacitive screens or multitouch (the fact that they just paid to Elan for infringing multitouch patents clearly indicates just that).

Please, take your PRADA, and ram it.

I used touch screens prior to the iPhone, nothing and I mean NOTHING had an interface that good or a screen that responsive. I had a top of the line Sony Ericsson and I owned an LG, and both were horrendous. The Sony used a stylus that clipped onto the side and the LG was utterly unresponsive.

To get an idea of which new features the next Apple phone/tablet will get, one can simply look at the current crop of the best Android devices. The only mystery about Apple designs left is the number and location of buttons (usually one, usually we know where).

You can do it the other way around. Apple creates a tablet PC. Others follow. Apple creates a Mobile OS. Google follows.

You do realize Apple can't always be first? So what if someone else has a quad core processor? Notebooks and desktops already had quad core before tablets... so you could say Android manufacturers are following the notebook-industry.

And oh, you should be ashamed of yourself. You name eight subjects Apple has 'copied', but only two of these eight are correct. The rest are pure expectations.

I really don't care if you want to talk negatively about Apple (because you clearly want to). I do care about it when you are stating things as 'facts', even when these 'facts' are just pure speculation.

To get an idea of which new features the next Apple phone/tablet will get, one can simply look at the current crop of the best Android devices. The only mystery about Apple designs left is the number and location of buttons (usually one, usually we know where).

I'll trump all that and take you back to 2007.

Apple release iPhone, Google takes a fit, moulds Android (which at that point had looked more like a RIM knock off) into a UI that resembles iPhone. Whores Android to multiple manufacturers, who use it to create their own "version" of the iPhone.

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